Word: frances
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Difficulty was the recurring theme of the President's appeal. He acknowledged what he called "the expression of your worries" in the municipal of elections that had cost his Socialist-Communist coalition 30 major mayoralties only two weeks earlier. He conceded that the "realignment" of the franc added urgency to the question of whether his economic policies were "good for France." Not surprisingly, Mitterrand concluded that they were. Said he: "In several months over hard terrain we have achieved more social progress than France has seen in the past half-century." But, he said, the nation...
...there was ever a time when the French looked for a display of leadership, it was last week as President Francois Mitterrand addressed the country to explain the painful consequences of the French franc's third devaluation in 22 months of Socialist government. Speaking on nationwide television, Mitterrand faced a public also confused by a slow-motion Cabinet reshuffle in which, after days of hesitation and debate among his advisers, the President had anticlimactically reappointed Premier Pierre Mauroy, 54, to head a streamlined government composed of virtually the same faces. Considering the difficulty of his task, Mitterrand...
Mitterrand's decision to reappoint Mauroy came as a surprise to many Frenchmen. It was Mauroy, after all, who had announced only in February that he "would not be the man of the third devaluation of the franc," and who, during the municipal election campaign, had blandly assured voters that in the struggle for economic equilibrium, "the worst is behind us." A gifted and genial politician, Mauroy has had day-to-day control over the Socialist experiment since Mitterrand's election in 1981. Wrongly anticipating a worldwide economic upswing and applying economic theories that had by then been...
...Socialists' difficulties reflected pervasive French anxiety about the economy. Unemployment is 8.9%, compared with 7.2% when Mitterrand was elected President. Inflation, which runs at 3.7% in West Germany and 4.9% in Britain, remains a stubborn 9.7% in France. And the foreign trade deficit, which reached $1.4 billion in January alone, may surpass last year's record $14 billion. As a result, the franc, which has already been devalued twice under Mitterrand, seems almost certain to be devalued again, even though the Bank of France has been spending some $150 million a week to shore up the currency. Meanwhile...
...generation of the franc, the pound, the lire and the dollar...